In supermarkets and grocery stores space for the mounting of bag dispensers is usually at a premium. It is desirable to use as much of the space available as possible for the display of produce or the handling of other groceries. However, certain facilities must be provided to the store's customers and checkout personnel for efficient produce sales and merchandise handling. One such facility is the provision of produce bags that may be conveniently used by the customers to collect the produce that they wish to purchase. Another facility is a checkout counter that has a bag dispensing rack mounted into a vertical counter surface, thereby providing unencumbered horizontal counter space for the handling of the customer's merchandise. Ideally, the store would like to provide simple to use produce and merchandise bag dispensers that are easy to maintain, hold a large quantity of bags of a sufficient size and which do not require frequent servicing.
In addition, grocery stores would like to use space for the bag dispensers not readily usable for the display of produce or other merchandise. It is most convenient to display produce and other items on angled or substantially horizontal shelves. Vertical surfaces, such as the walls of display stands and shelves are good locations to position bag dispensers as such surfaces are not readily usable for other displays. Toward this end, some supermarket chains have developed standardized plastic bins that are installed into vertical and some horizontal surfaces. These bins are designed to accommodate a horizontal rod on which a large roll of produce bags is rotatably suspended. The present invention makes use of these standardized bins to make available larger stores of produce or merchandise bags to the shopping customer and checkout personnel.
A number of dispensing devices and produce bags have been designed to efficiently provide produce bags and merchandise bags to shopping customers.
Patent Application No. 2002/0185513, published for Morris is directed to a bag separator and dispenser with a support frame that holds a shaft on which is positioned a roll of bags. The frame holds the shaft above a tapered shelf having a bag stop so that as bags are removed from roll onto the shelf the handles straddle bus stop and the hole between them. Frame has a first arm and an opposing second arm that holds shaft in place to prevent shaft from rotating to holes are formed in shaft that receive first and second arms and. The end of first arm is curved so that when inside of shaft it is coaxial with shaft while the end of second arm is not curved and when inside of shaft it remains perpendicular to the axis of shaft. The roller bag comprises a plurality of bags wound onto a core with an interior diameter that is slightly larger than the exterior diameter of shaft so that as roll rotates freely on core.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2003/0098326, published for Wile illustrates a bag dispensing rack which includes a rod which serves as the axle which fits into a tube of the bag roll. By means of the swinging arm, the rack keeps the roll of bags touching a fixed surface of the rack which provides a friction surface and causes resistance to unrolling as individual bags are removed.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2011/0073629, published for Tseng discloses a plastic grocery bag dispenser with side panels and a guide bar. A swing arm serves as an axle around which a plastic bag roll rotates. A plastic roll stop is located at the free end of the swing arm and adapted to keep the plastic bag roll in place during use. In operation, the plastic bag is pulled down over the rip tongue which causes the plastic bag roll to rotate until perforations in plastic bag pass over the rip tongue allowing bag to separate from the nested plastic bag roll.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,379,292, issued to Simhaee is directed to a continuous roll of plastic bags with separation lines for use in a dispenser mechanism (prior art U.S. Pat. No. 5,558,262). The plastic bags are provided in a roll of which includes a central axle. The axle rides in a pair of tracks and the film is pulled past a finger in a separating tongue which engages a slot in the center of the perforation line to separate the individual bags from the roll. The axle extends beyond the limits of the plastic bag roll core.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2005/0098600, published for Yeh et al. discloses to a streamline folded T-shirt style produce bag for roll mounting. The folded bags are wound onto a cylindrical core that stands beyond the outside edges of the plastic bags.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide a compact system for dispensing plastic produce bags or merchandise bags that can be removably installed in standardized plastic bins provided by grocery store owners. It is a further objective to provide such a system that can store an increased number of relatively large produce or merchandise bags in the standardized bin. It is a still further objective of the invention to provide a dispenser system that provides a visual indication when the bag roll needs to be replaced. It is yet a further objective to provide such a system that can be easily fabricated from existing dispenser and other mechanical components. Finally, it is an objective of the present invention to provide such a system that is durable, inexpensive and simple to service.
While some of the objectives of the present invention are disclosed in the prior art, none of the inventions found include all of the requirements identified.